


I Wish I'd Stayed Inside (my mother)

by Summertime_saddness



Category: Stranger Things (TV 2016)
Genre: Ableist Language, Body Horror, Honestly there's a lot going on with this one, Implied Relationships, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Mental Health Issues, Mental Instability, Multi, Pre-Relationship, Pregnancy Scares, Self-Hatred
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-09
Updated: 2017-12-09
Packaged: 2019-02-12 09:40:36
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,423
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12956508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Summertime_saddness/pseuds/Summertime_saddness
Summary: This is not the first time her body has betrayed her. It probably won’t be the last. The moment she was old enough to understand that the thing in the mirror was her, she knew there wasn’t something quite right about it.





	I Wish I'd Stayed Inside (my mother)

**Author's Note:**

> I'll be honest this is a weird story. I struggled a lot with what I was really trying to tell...This is a Nancy centered fic that follows her confusing feelings about herself and her fear that there is something wrong with her. 
> 
> See more notes for tag specifics

It’s Mike who first notices. Nancy’s been a little preoccupied of late. What with avenging her best friend, breaking up with Steve, getting together with Jonathan, then helping said new boyfriend’s brother rid himself of a shadow demon. Sorry, Minder Flayer. Nancy had a lot on her mind.

But then it’s breakfast on a Saturday and for the first time in almost a year Mike doesn’t seem like he’s trying to burst out of his skin. He’s observant, always has been, so it’s not too much of a surprise when he cocks his head to the side, stares at Nancy and says:

“There’s something weird about you.”

“Mike!” Their mother snaps, “Be nice.” But her head is already turned away and their father doesn’t bother looking up from his eggs.

Nancy and Mike roll their eyes in unison. 

“What do you mean?” 

Mike shrugs. He’s already back to pouring maple syrup over his eggs and bacon. 

“I don’t know, you look different.” 

Nancy huffs. She forgets about it.

 

It’s two weeks later when she thinks of it again. She’s with Jonathan, his hands are tracing the sharp indents between her ribs, his mouth hidden against her neck.

“You seem...different.”

Nancy laughs, shoving at him. “What?”

“I don’t know, you feel...hot.”

He’s pulled back now and Nancy smirks up at him, watching the red creeping along his face and chest.

“Well, Jon, we are making out in your car. I’d say it’s pretty hot.”

His face colors darker and she pulls him back into a kiss before he can stammer out an apology. She loves him, she knows she does, there’s no need for that here.

But the rest of the night she thinks about it. Her body. She wonders if she’s getting the flu. She wonders if Jonathan can see the guilt that grows inside her bones, right alongside the marrow.

 

When Nancy was 13 she stuffed her bra with the ankle socks her mom had bought her for church. They were white and scratchy, but Nancy dutifully shoved them into place. Luckily, Barb had come over before they left for Ashley B’s birthday party, and took them out.

“Come on, Nance.” She sighed. “You look fine, a lot of the guys like girls who are skinny.”

 

Now, as Nancy stands in her bedroom, in nothing but her bra and underwear, she wishes more than anything that Barb was here now. She stares at herself, all the lamps turned so the light shines directly onto her pale body, her limbs bony and small. She looks normal, for the most part, a few new bruises, a love bite from Jonathon under her collarbone - nothing out of the ordinary. 

And then - a heat, a flicker, like a wasp caught somewhere below her stomach, its tiny wings beating a fraction off beat from her heart. 

Impossible.

Nancy isn’t stupid. She knows more about the world than the other 17 year olds in Hawkins probably do. She knows she hasn’t always been as responsible as she could have been with Steve, with Jonathan. And not just with sex. She knows what it’s like to beat along in unison with their heartlines, to feel the soul beneath their skin. But the thought has her reeling, makes her breath catch and her body pump out adrenaline. Fight or flight.

Fight or flight.

Flight.

This is not the first time her body has betrayed her. It probably won’t be the last. The moment she was old enough to understand that the thing in the mirror was her, she knew there wasn’t something quite right about it.

The few times the Wheelers went to church, Nancy cleary remembers the pastor leaning down from his pulpit, red grey beard splattered with spittle as he genuflected:  
“Your body is just a vessel! It is your soul, your soul that is the true home in which you occupy.” 

Nancy hadn’t given faith that much thought but that line made her a believer. She understood then, that her body was some thing, a house, a vessel, that the real her was something inside, something undefinable. It comforted her.

When Mike was born she would stare down at him, the wriggling, crying creature with red skin. She poked his fat cheeks, unsure how something so tiny could posses so much life. A soul, she reasoned, must be able to posses anything -- no matter the size.

She dreamed at night of shedding her skin, her body peeling apart like a snake, pulling back her muscles, her organs, the blood would pour from her and drench the ground. She would pull back her scalp, pluck out her eyes, throw her wretched body away from her leaving only her true self behind. She would fly above the warzone that was her leftovers and charge, away, away, away. Into the night sky, the netherlands, to nowhere. 

She’d wake up back in her body and cry silently. Trapped.

 

The thing was. The world had everything to offer, but somehow it wasn’t meant for Nancy. When she was 11 she told Johnny Evans that she wanted to date him. Word got back to her mother before she even made it home from school.

“Nice girls don’t do that Nancy,” Her mother said, sighing as she pulled the evening’s dinner out of the oven. “You wait for the boys to come to you.”

Nancy was a smart girl. She figured it out, everyone had a role to play and it was just better if she kept to hers. 

But when Steve Harrington, basketball player, prom king, so popular he’s been nicknamed King Steve since 9th grade, offered to get Nancy a drink at Ashley B’s birthday party, Nancy decided she’d been playing it safe long enough.

 

She’s halfway to the Byers house before she realizes this might be a mistake. That this might be the worst fucking thought she’s ever had. But Nancy is a smart girl and the odds are that she’s right about it. 

So she drives the rest of the way, half runs to the Byer door, and knocks with knuckles that feel as like the bones of a baby bird.

Joyce smells like cigarettes and dish soap when she opens the door, eyes eyes wide with surprise.

“Nancy!” she exclaims, “Jon-Jonathan isn’t here...”

Nancy tries to smile, “I know, I actually came to talk to you. Can I come in? It’s important.” 

Joyce smiles, nodding quickly, her body movements are jerky, odd. But it’s just Joyce.

“Yeah, yeah,” she waves her hand inside, “Come in, come in.”

Nancy steps inside, this house is always the battleground. 

“Have a seat, do you want anything, water? I might have some pop in the fridge.” 

“No, I’m good,” Nancy takes a seat at the Byer’s sagging couch. “Actually, can I have a beer?” 

Joyce’s mouth twitches before she nods and disappears into the kitchen, reappearing with a Budweiser in hand. 

“Thank you.” Nancy murmurs. The drink is cold and the slippery condensation settles along the indents of Nancy's fingers. She takes a tentative sip and listens to the familiar sound of a cigarette being lit. 

She appreciates how Joyce doesn’t try to fill the silence with conversation, but Joyce is an exceptional woman, Nancy can see that now. She wonders if Joyce is like her, something else, trapped inside a body that doesn’t want her. But as she watches Joyce inhale and exhale, the grey smoke spiraling around her head, Nancy thinks maybe not. 

“I’m pregnant.” Nancy breathes out. She says it so quietly, that for a few seconds she doesn’t think Joyce has heard her. Then her mouth twitches and -- 

“Oh. Oh!” Joyce turns to her, eyes wide. “Jonathon’s?”

Nancy starts to nod than pauses. She opens her mouth, but all that comes out is a wail, a small, broken sound like the wind through dry twigs. She’s sobbing before she’s even registered the movement and curls her spine over herself, tears spilling into her lap.

“Oh honey,” Joyce surrounds her in an instant, wrapping her arms around Nancy’s thin shoulders. “It’s ok! We can figure it out.”

Nancy shakes her head violently, her body shaking so hard her teeth rattle.

“No? Honey, is it not Jonathon’s?” 

Nancy takes a rattling breath, all the things she was going to say, her explanation, fail her. But she came here, not for comfort, but for belief -- she tries to speak again:

“It’s not a baby, it’s something else, it’s a - a monster!”

Joyce doesn’t let go of her but pulls away slightly, her eyes bright with concern. 

“OK,” she says soothingly, “OK, Nancy, did someone force - “

Nancy shakes her head, tries to force her body to calm itself. 

“No, not like that. I just - I just know OK? I just know that it’s not normal.”

Joyce nods seriously, her face is tight with worry. Nancy almost feels bad for bringing this to her. But Joyce believed her son was talking to her through the lightbulbs in her house, Joyce thought a monster was living inside the walls, Joyce knew the body they brought in from the quarry wasn’t her son. And she had been right. 

“I just really need you to believe me.”

“OK,” Joyce says, “OK, I believe you.” She pause, reaching for her discarded cigarette as she furrows her brow. “Can you tell me why you think that?”

Nancy said nothing. She took a long pull of the beer, letting the tinny aftertaste settle against her tongue. She felt stupid suddenly, silly. Her panic undefinable. 

 

She had outgrown it. For the most part. Her general feeling of wrongness. But sometimes living within her skin felt so fucking unbearable. Nancy wasn’t dramatic, she was practical, responsible, respectful. She wore pastel sweaters and studied for her exams, she played her part. But sometimes Nancy felt like she had died the day the she born, caught somewhere in purgatory, half of her soul in this world, the other half in the beyond. Never to feel settled anywhere.

Steve had made her settled, that night after the party, the night Barb was taken. His hands on her had steadied her and for the first time in so long she felt like maybe her body wasn’t so terrible after all. Not when it could make her feel things like that. 

But then Barb was dead. And as much as she tried, she couldn’t get Steve out of her fucking head. She felt the guilt of it choking her, forcing the breath from her lungs, poisoning her organs into something rancid. 

Nancy wondered if it was all her fault. Everything that had happened. The monsters, the shadow world; she had broken the rules. By trying to make her body work the great cosmic curse, her birthright, had come for its reward. 

She felt the pulsing truth of it deep within her, the body of some strange creature growing next to her organs. This baby. She imagined it might burst out of her, like the Demogorgon from the walls of the Byer house, it’s many clawed feet tearing through her flesh, snapping her bones. Nancy sometimes thought it might come forth as a fully grown man, impossibly. It would be wearing a suit, something fancy and well cut, tailored to it’s body, dripping with amniotic fluid. It would turn to her, it’s face like Dr. Brenner’s, and say “Now, now Nancy, why’d you think you could get out of this unscathed?” 

 

But now, in the Byer house, Joyce kept her gaze on Nancy’s, her hand making soothing motions against Nancy’s shoulder blades. Nancy downs the rest of the beer. 

“‘Do you - Do you want to try to maybe explain it to me?” Joyce asked tentatively, “Why you think there’s something wrong?”

Nancy shrugged. She knew how she sounded. 

“It’s hard to explain, I just...” The walls of the Byer house fail to give any inspiration as she looked around. “I just know that there is something wrong, something else inside of me, and maybe this is just a baby but --” she turns panicked eyes onto Joyce. “-- what if it’s not?”

Joyce is silent, finishing off the rest of her cigarette with an anti climactic flourish. She smashes its end into an already ruined part of the table with a small sigh.

“I know I must sound crazy,” Nancy says quietly. “But I can’t help how I feel, you know?”

Joyce gets up and returns with two more beers. She hands Nancy one before sitting down on the couch.

“You’re not really supposed to be drinking but I don’t think this’ll hurt it much.”

Nancy smiles before pulling back the tab, the gentle click comforting.

“You know,” Joyce says quietly, “my parents tried to have me committed when I was 15.”

Nancy stops drinking mid swing, a bit of beer trickling out from the corners of her mouth.

Joyce chuckled, “I was sad all the time, and when I wasn’t, I was drinking. A lot. I was either sleeping or drinking and sometimes I wasn’t sleeping alone.” She gave Nancy a meaningful look. “It was a dark time.” 

“I’ve always been kind of…” Joyce shrugged her shoulders, “Haphazard.” She laughed quietly, “I’ve always felt a little too loud inside my skin, you know? I didn’t know how to get myself to settle.” She turned her large eyes onto Nancy. “But it got better honey, I know that sounds stupid but it’s true. It does. I also got some help, saw some real good Doctors. They were into some...modern stuff. It really helped.”

Nancy stared, her mouth slightly open. Joyce only gave her another small smile.

“Sometimes I’d feel things too, think something was wrong or was happening to me, when it wasn’t.” Joyce took a heavy drag from her cigarette, her pale skin looked almost transparent in the light of the afternoon. 

Nancy placed her can of beer on the table. She felt suddenly tired, more tired than she’d been when her, Jonathan and Steve had been the night after they’d tried to kill the Demogorgon. When they spent all night in steady silence all three of them afraid to admit they didn’t want to close their eyes. But Nancy wanted to close her eyes now. She wondered if Joyce would let her nap on the couch. 

“Why don’t you lay down, sweetie?”

Nancy almost cies in relief.

 

It’s dark by the time she wakes up again and she can hear the sounds of Joyce talking quietly to Will from the kitchen. He’s laughing and the sound of it catches at Nancy’s heart. Resilience is a powerful thing. The number of a psychiatrist Joyce gave her in a burried in the pocket of her jeans. 

 

When Nancy was younger she first learned about the Antichrist. The great enemy, the destroyer of worlds, evil incarnate come down to wreck all the goodness left on their rottan planet. The thing was, Nancy felt bad for him. What if, she wondered, her feet kicking gently against the wood of the church pews, he didn’t know he was evil? Just a regular human, trying so hard to be good, failing every time, life wracked with the incessant guilt. 

Nancy would cry about it sometimes. Alone at night. This lonely evil creature trying to fight against it’s nature. But Nancy knew best that you can’t escape your destiny.

 

She sneaks out of the Byers house, even though she’s pretty sure Joyce hears her and tells Will another joke as a distraction. It’s cold out and Nancy wishes that Jonathan were here, his steady warm arm would wrap around her, keeping her safe and warm. But Jonathan isn’t here and nothing will make her feel that way again.

 

She doesn’t realize she’s driving to Steve’s house until she’s down the block. She can make out the lights from his living room, golden with an undertone of red, reflecting through the window. Nancy can’t turn back now -- she can’t even back up properly. She stays there, car stalling, as she stares at the window she knows is Steve’s bedroom. Her cheeks burn with the unchecked memories.

“Nance?”

Nancy jumps, a short scream emitting from her and Steve backs away from her window, arms up in surrender.

“I’m sorry, Nancy.” He said he that gentle voice of his, the one he used when she was especially frazzled. “I didn’t mean to scare you.” He put his hands down, shuffling closer to her car. “But you are parked a few feet from my house so you understand why I’m over here.”

Nancy nodded, heart still pounding relentlessly against her chest. “ I uh -” She tugged some of her curly hair behind her ear. She became acutely aware of her appearance: she was wearing an old hoodie, the school mascot was prominently placed on the front. She was pale, with the lines of Joyce’s bedroom pillows pressed against her cheeks like a tattoo. 

“I don’t know why I’m here.” She whispered softly. She clutched the steering wheel painfully tight.

Steve leaned down so he was at eye level with Nancy, his lean forearm rested against the open window. 

“Nancy, are you alright?” 

Nancy laughed, a quick, bitter sound. 

“I’m screwed up, Steve,” she said, voice still a little above a whisper. “I just don’t know what to do.”

Steve’s face broke open, he reached a hand out, his fingers lightly grazing Nancy’s arm.

“Nancy…”

“I know,” Nancy sniffed, “I know we’ve talked about this before, I know what you’re going to say.”

Steve was silent, just kept brushing his fingers in soothing circles against the fabric of Nancy’s hoodie. She wiped furiously at her face.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” She shrugged Steve’s hand from her arm, putting her hands back on the steering wheel. “You should hate me Steve.”

Steve pulled back and let out a quiet laugh. “I could never hate you, Nancy.”

Nancy tried to give him a watery smile before pulling away from the curb. Nancy was a liar. Not everything between her and Steve was bullshit. 

 

When Nancy gets her period the next morning, she stares at the red on white for a full two minutes. She might have for longer if her mother didn’t call her name loudly from the kitchen downstairs.

Nancy makes it downstairs, bundled in a robe and her ratty sweatpants, before she notices Jonathan standing awkwardly in her living room.

“Oh!” She grabs at her robe, face flooding with embarrassment. “Oh.” 

Jonathon just smiles at her and pats the seat next to him. Nancy can hear the quiet noises of her mother in the kitchen making breakfast. 

She slides carefully into the couch, pulling one the decorative pillows onto her lap, the decorative string catching against her thigh. 

“It’s barely 9, Jon,” Nancy pulled a piece of lint from the pillow’s overly detailed surface. “Everything ok?”

Jonathan is silent but Nancy is used to it, waits him out.

“Steve, came to see me at work.” Nancy looks up, startled, but Jonathan pressed on. “He told me had run into you, that you were upset, seemed sad.”

Crazy you mean. Nancy thought bitterly, fucking nuts. 

“It’s uh - not the first time he’s talked to me about you.” Jonathan scratched at the side of his face awkwardly. 

“What?”

Jonathan shrugged. “He comes by the shop sometimes, asks me how you are, if you seem happy.” He looked across the room at the pictures of the Wheelers on the mantle, carefully matched. “He’s worried about you. He loves you.”

Nancy turns away, eyes focusing on anywhere but Jonathon’s open face. 

“He has no right…” She trails off. She suddenly feels tired. 

“I think I need some time.” She hears herself say. “To think. Figure things out. Everything just happened so quickly you know?” 

Jonathan is nodding, his hand is gentle and warm when it curls around her own. 

“I thought you might say that.” His voices sounds both so fucking sad but so understanding that Nancy’s heart clenches inside her body.

“Jon…” She stops. “I love you.” she says quietly. 

Jonathan gets up, kisses her forehead before turning to leave. 

“Call me when you’re ready.”

She doesn’t even cry when she hears the front door closing behind him.

Later, she finds the number that Joyce gave her. It’s wrinkled and the edges are already curling into each other. Her parents are out, Mike at Will’s, no one to overhear her. She dials the number the line ringing along with the thumping inside of her chest. 

Maybe even the Antichrist deserves something.

**Author's Note:**

> There's alot of violent imagery here, specially towards herself. I'd stay away if that's too triggering.
> 
>  I have no idea about the state of the mental health field in the 80s! I'm also lazy! hopefully it checks out.
> 
> She also has feelings for both Steve and Jonathon and it's implied that they both know about it. I'm hoping to make a part two for this, but we shall see! I'd like for them to all be together when she's at a healthier place.


End file.
